Learn how to focus and eliminate distractions.
Introduction
- Deep Work: focused, distraction-free work that uses maximum cognitive capabilities, resulting in creation of value and improvement of skills.
- Shallow Work: non-cognitively demanding, replicable work that can be done in a distracted state and that creates no value.
- The information economy requires us to master the art of quickly learning complicated things.
- Knowledge workers are unable to perform deep work due to distractions from social media.
Winning in the New Economy
Three groups of people will have a particular advantage in the new economy:
- High-skilled - those who can work well and creatively with intelligent machines.
- Superstars - those who are the best at what they do.
- Owners - those with access to capital to invest in new technologies driving the new economy.
Two core abilities to thrive in the new economy:
- The ability to quickly master hard things.
- The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.
- If you can't learn, you won't thrive.
- If you don't produce, you won't thrive- no matter how skilled or talented you are.
Deliberate Practice
Performing deliberate practice requires:
- Tightly focused attention on a skill you're trying to improve or an idea you're trying to master.
- Feedback to correct your approach and improve productivity.
Attention Residue: when you switch from Task A to another Task B, your attention doesn't immediately follow- a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the original task.
Therefore, batch hard/intellectual work into long, uninterrupted stretches.
High Quality Work = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)
Productivity & Depth
- Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.
- Who you are, what you think, feel and do, what you love- is the sum of what you focus on.
- Free time is unstructured and requires much greater effort to be shaped into something that can be enjoyed.
- Knowledge workers do lots of stuff visibly to appear busy. However, this busyness is a proxy for productivity.
- Deep work is an activity well-suited to generate a flow state.
- You don't need a rarified job; you instead need a rarified approach to your work.
- Productive Meditation: take a period in which you're occupied physically but not mentally (Ex: walking, running, showering, etc.) and focus your attention on a single well-defined professional problem.
Depth Philosophies
- Monastic Philosophy - attempts to maximize deep efforts by eliminating shallow obligations.
- Bimodal Philosophy - divide your time, dedicating some clearly defined stretches to deep pursuits and leaving the rest open to everything else.
- Rhythmic Philosophy - generate a rhythm by transforming consistent deep work sessions into a simple regular habit.
- Journalistic Philosophy - switch into deep work mode any time you find some free time. This approach is not for beginners.
Deep Work Ritual
- Specify where you'll work and for how long.
- Specify the rules and processes once you start to work.
- Specify how you'll support your work (Ex: coffee, food, light exercise, etc.)
- Sometimes to go deep, you must first go big. Make a grand gesture (go to a library, book/rent a room, etc.)
- The Whiteboard Effect: for some types of problems, working with someone else can push you deeper than if you were working alone.
- Focus on a few "wildly important goals".
- Track your activities and perform a weekly review.
Take Breaks From Focus
- Some decisions are better left to your unconscious mind to untangle.
- Attention Restoration Theory: spending time in nature can help improve your ability to concentrate.
- Don't try to squeeze a little more work out of your evenings. It can reduce your effectiveness the next day.
- Your capacity to perform deep work on a given day is limited.
- Schedule in advance when you'll use social media, and then avoid it altogether outside these times.
- Put more thought into your leisure time. Don't default to whatever catches your attention at the moment, but instead dedicate some advance thinking to the question of how you want to spend your free time.
Use E-mail Mindfully
E-mails deliver a steady stream of distractions addressed specifically to you.
- Use a sender filter - "I'll only respond to those proposals that are a good match for my schedule and interests". Send this to everyone to set their expectations.
- It's the sender's responsibility to convince the receiver that a reply is worthwhile. Do not reply to e-mails if they are ambiguous, or uninteresting, or nothing really good would happen if you did respond and nothing really bad would happen if you didn't.
Develop the habit of letting small bad things happen. If you don't, you'll never find time for the life-changing big things.
TIM FERRISS
Vocabulary (from the book):
- Anachronistic: Out of place in terms of historical or chronological context.
- Antithetical: Directly opposed or contrasted; mutually incompatible.
- Arbitrary: Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.
- Bloviate: To speak or write at length in a pompous or boastful manner.
- Brood: To think deeply about something that makes one unhappy.
- Caveat: A warning.
- Conjecture: An opinion or conclusion formed based on incomplete information.
- Corollary: A direct consequence or result.
- Cull: To select from a large quantity.
- Curmudgeon: A bad-tempered person.
- Denigrate: To criticize unfairly.
- Desultory: Lacking a plan, purpose, or enthusiasm.
- Despotic: Having unlimited power over others, and often using it unfairly.
- Dialectical: Relating to the logical discussion of ideas and opinions.
- Dire: Extremely serious or urgent.
- Discerning: Having or showing good judgment.
- Effuse: To pour out; to spread out.
- Esoteric: Intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest.
- Evince: To reveal the presence of (a quality or feeling); to show clearly.
- Exalted: Placed at a high or powerful level; held in high regard.
- Exulted: To show or feel elation or jubilation.
- Frenetic: Fast and energetic in a rather wild and uncontrolled way.
- Impotent: Unable to take effective action; helpless or powerless.
- Innocuous: Not harmful or offensive.
- Infamy: The state of being well known for some bad quality or deed.
- Insidious: Proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects.
- Lament: To express sorrow or regret.
- Missives: A letter, especially a long or official one.
- Monasticism: Resembling monks, or their way of life.
- Mull: To think about deeply and at length.
- Nuanced: Characterized by subtle shades of meaning or expression.
- Onerous: Involving a great deal of effort, trouble, or difficulty.
- Oracular: Of or relating to an oracle; prophetic and enigmatic.
- Ostensibly: Apparently true, but not necessarily so.
- Pragmatic: Dealing with things sensibly and realistically.
- Precarious: Not securely held or in position; dangerously likely to fall or collapse.
- Prolific: Producing in large numbers or quantities.
- Proscribe: To forbid, especially by law.
- Rarified: Understood by only a limited number of people.
- Serendipity: The occurrence of good/interesting events by chance.
- Sine qua non: An essential condition; an absolutely necessary thing.
- Siphoning: To draw off or transfer over a period of time, especially illegally or unfairly.
- Simulacrum: An image or representation of someone or something.
- Sprawl: To sit, lie, or fall with one's arms and legs spread out in an ungainly or awkward way.
- Stilt: Artificially formal; stiff and self-conscious or unnatural.
- Succinctly: In a brief and clearly expressed manner.
- Succumb: To fail to resist pressure, temptation, or some other negative force.
- Throes: Experiencing something difficult, painful, or unpleasant.
- Thrum: A continuous rhythmic humming sound.
- Tantalize: To tease with the sight or promise of something that is unobtainable.
- Toil: To work extremely hard or incessantly.
- Tumultuous: Making a loud, confused noise.
- Ubiquitous: Present, appearing, or found everywhere.
- Veneer: An attractive appearance that disguises someone or something's true nature.
- Verbiage: Speech or writing that uses too many words.
- Vying: Compete eagerly with someone in order to do or achieve something.
- Wean: To make someone give up a habit or addiction.
Comments
Post a Comment